Meeting of the zoning board of appeals.

We have a single item on our agenda.

That is a public hearing.

And it's a public hearing regarding an area variance pursuant to section 575-33E, parentheses six of the zoning ordinance relating to lot area and building requirements.

The property is located at 1019 Park Street, and it's for a proposed third story edition renovations and alterations of the second floor of an existing two-story building into a new three-story mixed use residential building property located in the C2 downtown central commercial district.

So we have Mr.

Thompson here representing the client.

The location uh the client, the applicant is uh Joseph Thompson Architect, PLLC, um located in North Division Street and Peakskill, and the owner is an LLC 1019 Park Street LL.

So we have Mr.

Thompson ready to present.

So good evening, sir.

Good evening, everyone.

You as well.

And uh let us have it.

Thank you.

So 1019 Park Street is the current home of MT Bank.

It's on the corner of Park Street, and where the bank cut through is between Brown and Park, where there's a uh municipal parking lot uh and also a few buildings that are adjacent off of that pass through.

Uh there's a new owner that recently purchased the building, and it's its current state's about 50% vacant.

Um so I'll bring up the plans in a moment.

But the the MNT bank footprint shrunk from the original bank size when it was first built back in the early 1960s as a as a first federal uh that bank took up the entire footprint.

Modern banking technology has now reduced the need for square footage in banks.

So that bank is reduced down to about 50% of the first floor.

So about 50% of the first floor has been vacant for quite some time now.

And then the upper floors, there's currently two tenants, so it's a little over 50% vacant on the upper floors.

Uh so the proposal is to adaptively reuse the building, convert the upper floors to residential apartment units, very similar to the proposal we had before the board for 41 North Division last year.

And to also create a third floor, third story addition within the footprint.

That's the part that we'd be seeking relief from zoning code, and that we're here before the board tonight to request a variance for.

If not, we could go out and seek a special permit for a different type of use if needed.

Uh but the upper floor apartments, uh, this is the building in its its current form on the screen, are basically planned within the volume of this building, and I'll I'll show how we're proposing that that would work.

Um this is a view from the bank street side where there's again an entrance on the lower left and a single row of windows for that second floor.

The site plan that's on the screen now, it's a zero lot line building.

You can see a faint outline on the upper right-hand corner.

That's the footprint of MT bank.

Again, a little less than 50% of the total ground floor.

There's entrances on the the upper left and lower right.

That's the the northwest and the southeast corners of the building.

Again, the first floor, you can see a little bit more clearly that usage um and the currently vacant area, you know, unhighlighted by the the MT bank footprints shaded in.

Upper floors again are approximately 50% vacant.

And so the proposed new plan would reoccupy that first floor.

You know, this layout might be dated now if we withdraw the restaurant proposal, but we could reoccupy potentially one or two tenants since there's two entrances on that ground floor.

And then the upper floors, this is a proposed floor plan for the second floor, third floor would be very similar for six new apartments that could again occupy the the bank street facade and the park street facade where we're entitled to to windows in public way for egress, uh placing the corridor on the I'm gonna call the back side of the building, which is really the the west side of the building where we have a little bit more depth than we need.

Uh and we're able to provide some tenant amenities on that western wall that is somewhat landlocked.

We're not entitled to place new windows on it, but we can plan you know business centers, uh, you know, uh storage use, uh small community room, things that the the tenants may be able to utilize.

Third floor, very similar footprint, the staircases would extend up, and also proposing to occupy the roof and create uh green roof with patio and plaza seating areas for those tenants.

And again, it's very similar to 41 North Division.

We're proposing to extrude skylights up through that roof, so we can bring natural light down into those apartments, but yet still provide privacy.

Um what's interesting about these two buildings, they're both similar in nature, both the same architect, uh very similar vintage, and we're dealing with the conversion of uh prior office uh space to residential.

So a lot of the same issues that we're grappling with on that, the planning of that project.

You said the proposed elevations for the the third story addition, you can see a dark band highlighted at the top.

We actually only need to increase the height by two feet to accomplish the third story within this volume.

And it's very similar on Bank Street.

What we're trying to do is very sensitively plan the window pattern to align with that below, so it feels like it was part of the original architecture.

We're not taking away, aside from the puncture windows, any of the original limestone facade, and we're stepping back to kind of carefully plan that alteration.

So the original architecture stays intact, and the the impact of the new uh construction, which is very minimal, is muted.

Uh the historic board has reviewed it.

They've approved the project.

They were very happy with what was done aesthetically to the building.

And these diagrams start to show how that that works.

So these are the current sections through the building.

You can see a large attic space at the top that's within the, I'm gonna call them very tall parapet walls on either end.